Skype's Qik (free) is another in growing cadre of well-made, single-purpose Android apps from larger companies, in the vein of Facebook Messenger, Instagram's Bolt, and the brilliant Hyperlapse, also from Instagram. These apps have the benefit of being simple and focused, and Qik follows in that vein by simply letting you send and receive short video messages with friends. But with the cornucopia of fully capable messengers out there for Android, like Obscure, Snapchat, Confide, WhatsApp, Wickr, and many, many more, Qik feels too limited.

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Qik Start You don't need a Skype account to use Qik, but, as with many messaging apps these days, you need to enter your mobile phone number and grant access to your iPhone contacts. That makes it easier for you to find people and vice versa. Some messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Viber, stick with this requirement, while others, such as Snapchat and Skype itself, do not require a phone number.

Versions of Qik are available for iPhone and Windows Phone, too, This is refreshing, considering most apps launch only for the iPhone at first, with the other platforms following at unpredictable intervals. I installed Qik on a Samsung Galaxy S5.

InterfaceQik is a beautiful app, with a clean, polished interface. Max was particularly pleased to see that the Android app's design was identical to the iPhone version's, and just as smooth and responsive.

Once you've got a few conversations going, your Qik screen shows them as wide bands with the the other person's name and image. You can swipe across these to hide them. A cool interface touch is that you can swipe up and down between shooting view and inbox view at any time. As with Snapchat, Qik's messages are impermanent: Any message you send is deleted automatically after two weeks.

You tap the big lens icon at top center to get going. When you tap the record button, the screen blacks out except for the record button and camera view. We've come to prefer the Vine-style hold-down-record-and-release-when-you're-done approach, but Qik instead uses separate presses to start and end recording.

You've got 40 seconds to complete your video message. That's more generous than Vine and Instagram, but the regular Skype app lets you send video messages of up to 3 minutes. After shooting, you need to choose recipients, unless you did so before shooting. If you've done that, tapping the record button again stops the recording, and immediately sends your video to your friend(s). You can also add multiple recipients to start messaging in a group.

One downside is that you can't review a recording before sending it. You can, however, simply hit an X if you're not convinced your recording is good enough to send. But be quick! If you run out of time, Qik automatically sends your message. Qik, like Facebook Messenger and Slingshot, seems designed to encourage you send selfies before you're ready, in the name of immediacy.

One limitation in Qik is that you can't upload existing video from your phone storage (as you can in Instagram and Vine), though for an app designed for immediacy that's not necessarily a minus. Nor can you stop and start recording as you can in some apps—it's a one-shot affair.

Each conversation includes a row of circular video thumbnails. Tap one and Qik will play through all the videos like a playlist, letting you get caught up quickly. You're free to review (or delete) videos until they expire. When you delete one of your Qik vids, it's immediately deleted from everyone else's phone, too. Max really likes the power to remotely delete a video, and has seen it in only one other app: Obscure. This isn't so much of an issue with Snapchat or Wickr, since its videos disintegrate upon viewing, though Qik lets you remotely delete them even before they're viewed.

Qik FliksIf you find yourself sending the same Qik videos over and over, you can pre-record up to a dozen canned videos to be deployed at your discretion. These are your personal video smilies. Michael prefers Facebook Messenger's huge selection of themed, clever, and professionally drawn stickers. Co-reviewer Max, on the other hand, is a fan of making his own personal video emoticons, so Qik is better suited to him in that regard.

Too Qik for Comfort Qik is smartly designed and extremely easy to use. Within seconds, Michael and Max were shooting messages to one another like they had done it all their lives. Qik sets out to be a fast, simple, ephemeral video messenger, and it succeeds. While we admire Qik, however, we are disappointed that it chooses to ignore text, images, and other basic pieces of the messaging puzzle. Max found that while he likes using Qik, sending a video message is a remarkably inefficient way to communicate since it requires your full attention. You must watch, listen, and perform, and not merely glance at text and tap keys to respond.

Qik simply doesn't offer anything that makes it stand out against the pack of messengers already available. Even your stock SMS client does everything Qik does, and more, without making you to create a new account on yet another service. If short videos quicken your pulse, try it out, but we'll be sticking with the likes of Wickr, Facebook Messenger, and Google Hangouts.

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Max Eddy is a Software Analyst, taking a critical eye to Android apps and security services. He's also PCMag's foremost authority on weather stations and digital scrapbooking software. When not polishing his tinfoil hat or plumbing the depths of the Dark Web, he can be found working to discern the 100 Best Android Apps.
Prior to PCMag, Max wrote for the International Digital Times, The International Science Times, and The Mary Sue. He has also been known to write for Geek.com. You can follow him on...
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Michael Muchmore is PC Magazine’s lead analyst for software and Web applications. A native New Yorker, he has at various times headed up PC Magazine’s coverage of Web development, enterprise software, and display technologies. Michael cowrote one of the first overviews of Web Services (pretty much the progenitor of Web 2.0) for a general audience. Before that he worked on PC Magazine’s Solutions section, which in those days covered programming techniques as well as tips on using popular office software. Most recently he covered Web...
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